In Marble Walls
by Robe a la Anglaise
Summary: "She weaves her love around her heart and hones it and polishes it until it is hard as diamond and sharp as a knife". Introspective one-shot with Asylum!Belle. Complete.


It was a fast, mad descent into this fandom (lets be honest though, its all about Rumbelle). I regret nothing.

Except maybe that I wish I were a faster writer.

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**In Marble Walls**

She's called just 'Regina' here or sometimes 'Mayor'. Belle knows names are important, but pinning a different title to an evil, manipulative, heartless bitch doesn't make her anything less than what she is. In her head, Belle only ever thinks of her as 'Regina' (when she's feeling kind, at least), because she doesn't want to afford the woman more importance than she's due.

Regina is a liar, so when she says _this_ world is real while the other one she remembers is a delusion; it's easy for Belle to know it's a lie.

Over the past decades Belle has learned the hard way that Regina uses both lies _and_ truths as weapons. Regina only ever offers truths when it's a truth that is thin and sharp - something that can wound. Her lies, on the other hand, are heavy and blunt - her lies bludgeon, and her truths cut.

She visits rarely, and when she does she flings truths at Belle like daggers. Usually there's no reason to expend the effort on a hefting a lie; Belle is powerless, and Regina knows it.

If Regina had any kindness in her at all, Belle might truly believe herself mad; but in a twist Regina would find infuriating, her cruelty reveals her dishonesty. That's the only reason Belle knows the _whys._

Why she is sure her name is Belle, even though the 'doctors' claim otherwise.

Why she's here in this whitewashed _dungeon_.

Why time is frozen and no one else notices.

Why she knows about the curse and the prophesy.

Regina might want to pass-off the prophesy as the pathetic ballyhoo of some two-bit fortune teller and to revel in the glory and triumph of the curse but Belle thinks it's pretty obvious that Regina doesn't have the subtlety or the creativity to create something of this magnitude. This curse is an incredibly complex piece of magic; so multifaceted and intricate and interwoven that it's almost beautiful in its complexity.

Nasty thing, of course, but impressive nonetheless.

Regina may never admit to it, but Belle flatters herself that she knows _him_ well enough to know a piece of his work when she sees it. To her it's plain as day - the curse and the prophesy are both _his_.

The only _why_ she's not sure of is why _she_ remembers when everyone else forgets.

Regina remembers, but obviously because she is the one who enacted the curse. Belle suspects that _he_ remembers as well, wherever he is. He's the creator after all, and he's far too clever to be snared in his own web.

She might not be 100% sure of this '_why'_, but she has a theory. She's also had a long time to ruminate on it, so she's relatively certain it's a good one.

Of all the things she learned in her months in the Dark Castle, this is her most important take-away: magic can't spring full-fledged from nothing.

Magic must be built on something, some price must be paid.

It's simplest with material things; a lock of hair, an article of clothing, a particular herb – and these are the methods in the household spells used by old village women, the ways of the small magics of the dime-a-dozen magicians and wizards who drifted from town fair to town fair in the old world.

But magic can be 'powered up' by ephemeral things, and that had been Rumpelstiltskin's stock and trade.

He built seamless spells on the color of someone's hair, the first words they ever spoke to their sweetheart, or the name of their unborn child. He built and manipulated magic around things that people _loved._

The curse anchoring this town and twisting the identities of so many people is _big magic_. The curse would have taken something far more significant than the color of someone's hair, or their taste for strawberries and Belle wagers that heartache would probably have had enough 'umph' to get the curse up and running.

She wasn't a fool. Even as she stormed out of his castle in an injured snit she knew he cared about her (she just wasn't about to hang around like some pathetic heartsick puppy, begging for scraps of affection) and she suspects the curse didn't touch her because the groundwork on which the curse was built was, basically, _her. _

It's her theory why, 28 years ago, when thousands of her fellow fairy tale peoples had woken up in a foggy stasis, that she had woken up knowing exactly who and what she was.

In a strange way she could consider the curse is his love song to her; a twisted, broken-hearted sonnet.

When she gets out of here, and all of this is over, she's going to hit him for that.

About thirty seconds before she snogs him breathless, _whether he likes it or not_.

She's angry at him for creating the curse in the first place (and some days her heart breaks all over again thinking of all the misery it's caused) and for giving Regina the key to unlocking it, but Belle finds that she can't _blame_ him. Not really. Loving him certainly doesn't make her blind to his faults – but Belle knows heartbreak and she understands more than she did when she flung hurtful words at him in wounded pride and mortification.

Being at the mercies of the Queen has _helped_ Belle understand by shoving that metaphorical shoe on the other foot:

Those without power cannot protect those they love, no matter how noble their intentions or principals.

He couldn't love her and be with her without losing his power, and without his power he couldn't protect her.

What a terribly simple way to sum up something that in reality was a muddled, emotionally confusing mess (and he's a man, after all, so he was probably not even half-conscious of his own motivations). By caring about her, he made her a target (Belle now sees that Regina sending her back to the Dark Castle brimming with romantic ideas about true love and curse-breaking was actually a message to Rumpelstiltskin fraught with subtext that Belle lacked the perspective to appreciate).

By making her leave he must have thought he was deflecting the Queen's suspicions and keeping her safe.

Stupid man.

Belle isn't crazy, though many days she wishes she were - 28 years is a long time to spend in the same boring little room, and if she were crazy it might be easier to pass the time. But giving in to madness would be giving into _her_. So instead she tells herself stories over and over and over again until she knows them by heart. She writes her own epics of the past, and the present, and the future. Sometimes they are memories. Sometimes they are hopes and dreams.

Every day she weaves her love around her heart and hones it and polishes it until it is hard as diamond and sharp as a knife

She needs _something_ to use as a weapon in the war she can feel brewing, because she is _damned_ if she will let that evil cow win.

Belle knows her calm resolve in the face of endless imprisonment, neglect, and her memories disquiet Regina - and Belle knows _him. _She knows how he plans and how he schemes, and she knows it is only a matter of time before all of this comes crashing down.

He will win.

He's cleverer, and more powerful than Regina could ever hope to be.

Regina knows it too.

Belle can see the fear behind the façade of triumph that on occasion peers through the tiny window to her cell.

When Belle is having a bad day she considers that this fear of Rumpelstiltskin is probably the only thing keeping her alive and the reason she was captured and imprisoned in the first place. If push comes to shove (or if Rumpelstiltskin is being particularly obstreperous about one of Regina's pet issues), well, Regina knows that a person's heart is a valuable bargaining chip. The _ultimate_ bargaining chip.

Lovely.

Belle is just biding her time now, as the war looms, because eventually someone will get lazy, or careless, or they will take their eyes off her for one second too long and she will slip through their fingers like a shadow. Every instinct and desire in her weak and wanting heart will turn her feet towards him, but she will do the difficult thing and turn them the other way. By leaving she will keep him safe.

And if the war begins before someone gets lazy or careless, or if they watch her too closely?

There is a small, sharp piece of porcelain tucked inside one fraying corner of her thin mattress. It's sharp enough to cut flesh (she knows from experience) and that's the reason the shard is option 'B'. Belle refuses to be a bargaining chip, and she refuses to be used as leverage against him.

If it comes to it, she will sacrifice the very last piece of herself to prevent it.

So she tells herself fairytales, and every day she fashions a weapon from her heart and waits for her chance to fly, bravery swift on her heels.

**End**

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*peace y'all*


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